SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2023

As a sales exec, you may not know actually the product well. A few recent examples: Example #1: I was recently chatting with a VP of Sales about a job position, which I get he wasn’t 100% sure he wanted. Don’t hire that one. Example #2: A little while ago, I reached out to 3 top support vendors.

Sales Hiring 244

Sales Hiring Sales Customer Support Startup 244

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 20, 2021

The challenges facing customer support leaders are more complex than ever. They need to be able to balance efficiency with a great customer experience , meet rising customer expectations , and keep team morale high , all while ensuring that they don’t blow through their budget or burn out their team.

Scale 156

Scale Customer Support Scaling Headcount 156

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Help desk metrics are measurements that allow you to track your performance and effectively adjust your strategy to provide better customer support. They’re vital for gauging whether or not your current customer support solutions are meeting the needs of your customers and your organization. Resolution Time.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Metrics Technical Review Scale 211

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2023

Now is the time to hire someone who went to work for a unicorn, got laid off, and is bitter.” That’s enough to start hiring people. A tactical strategy — Hire one great person in the next six months and then another one. Obsess about not hiring a salesperson but one great AE. And then hire another.

Sales Hiring 227

Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success SaaS 227

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

How do you win with a high-velocity sales strategy in a fast-moving, competitive market? In a special session of Workshop Wednesday, Gorgias Founder & CEO Romain Lapeyre and Gorgias VP of Sales & Partnerships Aasif Osmany share their learnings, advice, and hacks for optimizing your sales process. Sign up for free.

Sales Hiring 159

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 159

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Without the product management, you won’t be able to actualize that vision, because there’s no one to handle research, logistics, and all the other elements that go into successfully building and marketing a product. This is why, even for early-stage startups, the sooner you hire your first product person, the better.

Sales Hiring 60

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Management 60

CustomerSuccessBox

APRIL 27, 2022

Have your customer’s been engaging a lot with your business? That customer experience has a lot of impact on customer engagement. And you’d want a customer success team to bring this experience to them. For that to happen, you must hire the best Customer Success Manager (CSM).

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Customer Success Management Interviewing 52

ChurnZero

JULY 6, 2021

This spotlight features, Scott Polidoro , Customer Support Representative at ChurnZero. . Scott plays a central role in providing best-in-class services to ChurnZero’s rapidly expanding customer base by giving product guidance and investigating and helping to resolve product issues. . Customer Success Around the Web.

Customer Support 98

Customer Support Sales Hiring Churn Customer Success 98

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic brought seismic change to sales teams around the globe. The dependence on the in-person sales office sharply declined, and remote workforces took their place during the height of the crisis. Yet with encouraging news about the vaccine, SaaS leaders are looking beyond the pandemic to the future of sales.

Sales Hiring 142

Sales Hiring Sales Retention Customer Support 142

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 24, 2018

How do you scale a support organization without breaking the budget or killing the quality of the customer experience? It’s an age old question for anyone leading a customer support organization, the sort of challenge that requires continuous innovation as a company and its customer base expands. Automation.

Scale 178

Scale Customer Support Scaling Strategy 178

CustomerSuccessBox

AUGUST 9, 2021

Finding the right Customer Success Manager is extremely important for every SaaS company today. The customer success manager is much more than the traditional account manager. CSMs ensure that the customers realize value and achieve their goals using your product. Early Hiring.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring Customer Success Management Interviewing 59

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 9, 2017

How important is hiring for emotional intelligence? After two tests within the sales organization across several hundred people, the data revealed that cognitive ability predicted workplace performance in that company five times better than emotional intelligence. Professor Adam Grant wrote Emotional Intelligence is Overrated in 2010.

Sales Hiring 160

Sales Hiring Startup Construction Interviewing 160

Tom Tunguz

MAY 31, 2017

This might seem like a very logical argument for differentiating on sales processes, but it’s a fallacy. First, it presumes that the most valuable skill set in sales is building rapport. Great salespeople understand how to manage a sales process and the five key people in a sales process. Trust is critical.

Sales Hiring 100

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourced Development 100

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

One of the first what How to Hire a Great VP of Sales at the New York Enterprise Tech Meet-Up (thank you to John Lehr and Work-Bench for setting this up). The Number One Thing You Can Do to Accelerate Your Business Post-Initial Traction is Hiring a Great VP of Sales. I don’t know anything about sales.

Sales Hiring 257

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 257

SaaStr

OCTOBER 13, 2023

If your product has effortless growth or a word-of-mouth motion and momentum, it automatically takes care of one of your biggest cost drivers: sales and marketing. But, for every dollar of revenue they brought in, they had to spend almost a proportional amount for support. Once you hire a team, there’s a soft cost.

Outsourcing Services 238

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale SaaS 238

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2021

If you want to hire your first sales rep and close more deals, you need to understand how the sales process works, what tools your team needs to be successful and learn to speak sales. Sales definitions you should know. CRM objects — Represent the sales relationship you have with a specific person or company.

Sales Hiring 298

Sales Hiring Startup Sales Forecasting 298

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2023

Before, humans graded the outcome of customer support. Intercom’s homepage says AI will automate 50% of support interactions, that is disruptive, but that’s adding AI to an existing product. AI can be disruptive in two major ways: With customers, it can mean better outcomes, which is great and takes work. Fire them.

Scale 227

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success AI 227

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

You’ll need to hire aggressively to get to the next level and continue that rapid growth. But what roles should you hire for, and what will your org chart look like at each stage? In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Head of Sales.

CTO Hire 243

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 243

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2022

But 74% of you find your Paid Pilots convert to Paid Customers at the end of the pilot. 41% of you have sales do some customer onboarding, not just CS or other specialists. Should sales just disappear once the contract is signed? #5. On average, you got a 33%+ boost in revenue when you hired your first VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 283

Sales Hiring Pricing Scale Interviewing 283

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2022

If you’re only investing in sales and marketing, you’re missing a huge revenue opportunity. Customer Success isn’t just for established leaders; it also helps growth-stage companies compound their growth through retention, upsell and expansion. When should you start customer success? Scaling your customer success team.

Customer Success 216

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Leadership 216

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2022

They built their sales funnel in the same fashion to empower customers with autonomous product discovery and conversions. Yet, they needed to work out some challenges to support a fully independent journey (e.g., when customers needed to switch from an old payroll solution to PayFit).

SMB 182

SMB Sales Hiring Scale B2C 182

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2022

E.g., Sales +Marketing Expenses < First Year ACV = Success ? One you may not have heard but it’s a good one — is Hire One Customer Success Manager for every $2m in ARR. If you haven’t hired a Customer (or Client – same thing ) Success Team before, it can be confusing to start.

Scale 244

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Scaling 244

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 9, 2021

It was also my first official week in the People Development Program Manager role, which certainly added to the challenge! . Onboarding virtually can be tough for our new hires. We needed to lean in and provide more opportunities and space for our new hires to connect, learn, and engage with each other and the business. “By

Onboarding 253

Onboarding Sales Hiring Scale Systems Review 253

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2020

I recently put out a call on Twitter and LinkedIn on folks’ top tip to take friction out of their sales processes. “Presumptive close in a transactional sale. “At “We added slack for customer support and on boarding” — Adam Livesay, founder, Elevat. “Simplicity. “Listen.

Sales Hiring 338

Sales Hiring Sales Outsourced Development Technical Review 338

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Why real customer support is critical. ” So what are maybe one or two things you want to give as advice to founders who are doing sales in the very early stage, the first couple of million ARR, that you feel are super useful in that stage in kind of trying to develop that, I think that sales muscle, if you will.

Sales Hiring 218

Sales Hiring VP of Engineering Payment Methods Scale 218

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. Customer Onboarding Specialist: Responsible for helping new customers get up and running with the company’s products. Account Managers: They serve as the lead point of contact for all customer account management matters.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

For years, our hiring strategy for the HubSpot customer support team was simple. When support reps were overwhelmed with the volume of work, we’d hire another one. This simplistic model of growth worked to get the support team to about 25 people. I had just taken over the support team at HubSpot.

Customer Support 79

Customer Support Sales Hiring Scale Acquisition 79

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2022

Quickly, though, your attention turns to initial traction, your first critical hires, and building out those early business functions. With early revenue, you start thinking about churn and scalability of every aspect of the business, including product, infrastructure, customer support, sales and marketing.

Finance 328

Finance Outsourcing Services Systems Review Technical Review 328

User Pilot

JANUARY 22, 2024

TL;DR Customer success models are frameworks that help organizations ensure that customers can use their products effectively to realize their goals. Customer success is a more proactive and holistic approach than customer support, customer service , or account management. Growth models.

Customer Success 103

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale SaaS 103

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

The Challenges and Pitfalls of a Partner Ecosystem Drata attributes much of its success to its partner ecosystem, which is an interesting case study for most, so how do they break up marketing, sales, and resource allocation vs. a more direct-sales modeled business? The sales reps were friends, and accounts were shared.

AWS 205

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 205

CustomerSuccessBox

JANUARY 24, 2019

Customer Success is a new phenomenon and so, several companies club it with customer support. They feel that customer success is an extension to customer support. All the functions post sales have gained importance in the subscription economy as now the power is in the hands of the customers.

Customer Support 67

Customer Support Customer Success Sales Hiring Transportation 67

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2022

Non-critical product managers, customer support and success, etc. They pretty much never get any really incentives to stay, maybe some standard stock options as new hires. and in some sad cases, sales and marketing — the acquirer doesn’t even want. This varies by acquirer and type of deal.

Startup 222

Startup Sales Hiring Compensation Finance 222

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 4, 2013

These are my notes from that conversation: Managing churn is a complicated problem because everyone in the company can impact it. The product and engineering teams must build a product that meets customer needs. Sales must find and close the right kinds of customers.

Sales Hiring 100

Sales Hiring Customer Success Startup Churn 100

FastSpring

AUGUST 2, 2023

When TestDome was created, CEO and co-founder Mario Zivic knew the pre-employment testing software company wouldn’t be able to rely on domestic sales to succeed. “As We do less than 1% of our business in Croatia, so it’s not really a big market for us,” added TestDome’s head of customer success and sales Igor Novosel.

Payment Solutions 147

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Merchant Services AI Search 147

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2020

Even once you hit just $2m-$3m ARR — fairly early — the trade-offs start to become clear for startups with customers both Smaller and Larger: Small customers consume just as many sales, success, and marketing resources. Small customers churn at a much higher rate. Small customers have short sales cycles.

SMB 341

SMB Sales Hiring Marketing Enterprise 341

Sales Hacker

JULY 21, 2021

“We’re looking for a strategic rockstar sales rep who knows how to leverage and optimize our customers’ digital transformation to really move the needle!”. There are sales buzzwords that we love and some that we really hate. When you use sales buzzwords correctly, you’ll sound like you’re an industry insider.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales Sales Enablement 125

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 26, 2018

At some companies, customer success managers create resources for thousands of self-serve customers, while at others they work with a select few. Sometimes they’re just account executives with a fancier title, or the two roles have simply been combined into one. The role of customer success teams.

Sales Hiring 123

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Underperforming Technical Team 123